Wow, well, where does one begin on a running blog like this one? At the start of things I guess ! First off, I'd like to say that some names have been changed to both protect anonymity. There will be no bashing, no trashing, and no negativity here. Only things that I have learned through loss and love along the way so far.

For those of you who have seen the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother", the plot of things is that our dear Narrator, Ted, is telling his children - you guessed it - how he met their mother.

However, he doesn't start things off quick and dirty, and simply tell them. He wants to enrich them with the entirety of the backstory that led up to the meeting as well. This show was introduced to me by my most recent ex, who will most certainly play a part in my own story later on down the line. You see, in our lives, everyone who enters as a significant other plays a role in the leading up to the meeting of our other half. Whether it takes fifty years, or you meet them in highschool, there is always a significance to anyone who came beforehand.

This blog is going to detail each and every one of those relationships - the good and the bad (that I remember) - that will hopefully lead up to you guys getting to share the point in which I find "the one". Though as a warning, I have not yet found this woman, so you guys get to ride shotgun as I wade through heartbreak, and the search for her! Hooray real life! Before we get to all the juicy stuff though, I'm going to fill in a few crucial details about myself first.

Yes, I'm a hopeless romantic -which is something I'd love to clarify. I hear that term used loosely by half the people I run into nowadays, to be quite frank, it pisses me off. It cheapens the phrase to have it used so wantonly.

To me, a hopeless romantic is not someone who simply believes in a soulmate, and believes that they will one day find someone to spend the rest of their life with. A hopeless romantic, to me, is someone who loves like every relationship they have will be the last that they will ever need. Each person that I've shared my life with has seen that much. This is not to say that I'm obsessive and collect toenail clippings and used napkins though A hopeless romantic will move across the country on a moment's notice, to simply be with the one they love. They remember little details, such as a button missing off of a sweater the first time a kiss is shared. Favorite flowers, your significant other's great grandmother's birthday. All of it matters in the scope of things, and trust me, they notice when you notice.

Right now, Im only 25 years old. I know some of you are thinking that Im still only a child. However, everyone has to start somewhere, and everyone's story has a beginning. There are a large amount of newer members on here younger than myself, and hopefully they manage to take away some lesson, or at the very least some entertainment in the ass-hattery I managed while I was a teenager, up till now.

There are a few trends in the women I date that you're going to notice along the way here, but we'll just see if you manage to figure things out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The first relationship that I ever had of note was definitely my longest. It ran from sophomore year in highschool, all the way up until about the time I turned twenty. So roughly five years, give or take a few on and off's. The very first time I saw her, and we'll call her Jane, was on a schoolbus. High cheekbones, long auburn hair, and a pair of gorgeous blue eyes. After a long day at highschool (I know, suuper case of puppy love), we ended up sitting together on the way home.

Her and I hit things off pretty fast, and I quickly learned a lot of intimate things about her personal life. It turned out that Jane was a foster child, and was currently in the foster system with no real mind to be taken up. She simply wanted to hit 18, and move on as an adult. You might ask why in the hell any of that matters, but it did. The red tape that had to be crossed to even take this girl to a school dance was ridiculous. Were you ever fingerprinted at 16? Have to sign legal documentation stating your intentions? Yeah, I definitely did.

The weird things aside, her and I were the "it" couple of highschool. I was a highschool varsity defensive end, and she a cheerleader. Voted cutest couple by the good ol yearbook and most likely to marry. The works.

As her and I aged, we actually took each other's virginity at seventeen. Which boy, let me tell you, was no picnic. We took her dog for a walk. "Walk." Haha. Yeah right. With the dog chillin out, leash tied to a tree a few feet away, and a bunch of half-retarded kids threatening to expose us, we did the deed in a wooded area, unprotected. Can you guess what happened next? Yeah. She spilled the beans to foster mom, and world war nine erupted. Afterward, a young man's worst nightmare soon followed.

My dearest Jane skipped a cycle, and gave me the absolute longest month of my life. There was NO WAY this could have been happening to me. So, a month crawled by agonizingly slow, with her and I discussing (as adults at 17, derp) what would happen if she really was preggers. Well, it turned out in the end, that the scare was just that, and we went on, happily continuing to fool around as kids do. Dark bus ride home after track and field events? Primetime.

There was one event that I definitely recall that my parents still give me shit for to this day. I had had my car for maybe three months (a dodge dynasty if memory serves), when we decided to prolong a ride home, and do a little parking time for some hanky panky. Hell, we were kids, a car was freedom, and lets be honest. Young or old, that shit feels awesome when it's with someone you trust.

So, her bottom manages to thump the horn on the steering wheel a few times, and we almost get busted by a curious driver who came to see what all the commotion was about. I think I managed to get him to piss off by saying my steering wheel cover had come loose, and I was trying to pound it back into place.

Now, normally, I had us home by 3:45 at the latest. When we finally managed to look at the clock, imagine the shit-your-pants surprise when it's almost 5:15 in the evening. Oh. My. God. So, my super ingenious idea? Near-accident. I had a cake baked for class that morning and had forgotten to bring it into the building, so it was still sitting in my backseat.

Aha ! The seventeen year old brain does it again ! Hopping out of the car, I grab the roll of blue mechanic paper towels from the trunk, grab the cake, and give it a toss. So now, with cake frosting spattered all over my backseats, the floor, and even somehow on the ceiling, I began to smear it to shit in an attempt to clean it off and make it look like the thing had gone flying. Pretty genius if I do say so myself.

The only other thing that I remember before her and I moved off to college together was fooling around on a pile of freshly chipped wood. Protip ladies and gents: Don't ever, ever, EVER do that. I had splinters for weeks in places I couldn't even see.

Alrighty ladies and gents ! We're back for a little more are we? Well, I'm glad you came back, as this is where little bitty red flags begin to pop up, even in the highschool romance that was Jane and I. I'd also like to point out at this time, that commentary is welcome, so long as it isn't negative, or negativity aimed at the ex's. That's not what this blog is about. I simply want to enrich you guys with a few entertaining tales, and let you learn from my mistakes.

Anywho, we left off after the cake incident, which in hindsight was not my brightest idea. Im sure we can all think of better things to do with a perfectly good caramel cake, and the frosting that covered it .

It is at this point, that you meet my first best friend (and still one I am very, very close to today). We'll call her Kristie for simplicity's sake, and move on with the story. This is the girl that I turned to whenever I had problems, the girl that supplied me with my first ever condom (right after hearing about the pregnancy scare, which I got a hard slap from her for). Before texting, the kids used to pass notes. Im sure all of you around my age, and older are well aware of how treacherous these little pieces of paper are. There was no censoring the messages within, no hiding their contents, and if a teacher got ahold of em, usually you were pretty much fucked from all angles.

Well, dearest Jane decided she was going to use Kristie as a go-between between her and some other dude. Kristie, definitely more loyal to me than some girl who was new to the school by only six months, popped that fucker open and gave it a read. Abhorred by it's contents, she gave it to me instead of the rolly-poly fuck who it was intended for. I gave it a read, and it turned out that this other dude had gotten a finger wet with my woman. Now, with this being my first serious girlfriend, there is absolutely nothing like that first ice-cold knife of a realization that you've been cheated on.

I was glacial towards her the entire day, until our last period in show choir. Yes, dear readers, Adonis has pipes, and wore sequins. They were royal blue, and I even had a pretty epic sequined bow-tie. Picture that for a moment... aaaand now we can move on.

So we're relaxing up against the wall of the room on one of our breaks, and she finally gets the gall to ask me what's wrong. Though by her demeanor, Im pretty sure she already knew that I knew. I didn't say a word to the girl. I simply withdrew the note from the little pouchy pocket of my hoodie, and tossed it into her lap with a cocked eyebrow. She immediately burst into tears, began apologizing profusely, and through the next few days promised it would never happen again.

Like a moron, I believed her. Over the next semester, it happened at least four more times. Now, what I find absolutely repulsive, is this kid had warts on his hands from some unknown source. I know, some of you ladies are cringing. I may not have the anatomy to sympathize, but that's gross as all shit when you think of where he was putting said warty fingers.

Finally, one day I caught him just as he grabbed her by the hand and yanked her down into a kiss. Now, by this point, I'd like to point out that I was (and would be for the next year or so), at the peak of my physical shape. I played football, threw shot and discuss, and lifted weights twice a day. Making sure no teachers were around, I walked up, dragged her off him (a little more forcefully than I should have, admittedly), and took a niiiice fist-full of his greasy hair. He was fairly italian/latino, so he had that extremely short and wavy hair that makes it hard to get a good purchase.

Now, to be honest, I don't remember my exact words. It had something to do with tearing his male hanging parts off, and hanging him with them, but I don't recall how it was phrased. At this point, I would like to clarify something. I abhor violence. It is pointless for the most part, but every now and then, that primal male surfaces and removes that conscious choice. The thump his head made when I slapped it against the brick behind him was sharp, and the hard pop to his solar plexus to knock the breath out of him was even harder.

I still feel terrible to this day for what I did, but it seemed to solve the problem. He never went near my woman again (insert cave man grunt here), and she never spoke to him again. After that, things were fantastic all the way through graduation, and I couldn't have been happier. Jane and I were accepted into the very same university in Indianapolis, myself for pre-med studies, and her for dance.

The dorms we lived in were actually co-ed, so you can imagine I spent most of my time in her room since she had a single and I had a roommate. Though my room was one of the deluxe ones (Thanks mom and dad!) and had a shower, so we stayed down in mine now and again when my roomie was out and about. The first semester went wonderfully, and her and I took care of business like two rabbits on Viagra.

The second semester, however, was when my spiral began. I got a letter sometime around Christmas that they were dropping the pre-med program, and my degree would be converted to a general biology degree. What. The. Fuck. The following spring semester, my grades began to dip, and my weight began to increase. I simply no longer gave a flying fuck, because my dream had inexorably been shaken. I think for that semester, I managed a 1.7 gpa or some rubbish. Immediately I was slapped on academic probation. Now really, there were no detrimental effects to this, other than I had to pull my next semester up to a 2.5 to continue on at the University with funding.

So what happens? Still didn't give a shit, and was too proud to see any advisors. So, the following semester, I land a 1.4. At this point, I was below the minimum standards for the campus, and had even pulled on another 35 lbs. They summarily ejected me from the campus, and I had to pay back the entire semester, because my grant that allowed me full mandatory fees (something like 3k for the semester), had been pulled with my bad grades. Probably the stupidest fucking thing I had ever done.

During the second semester of my probation, preceding the ejection, Jane had become fed up with me, and cheated once more. This time however, she had cheated fully. I remember that night feeling absolutely horrible (had a bad stomach flu or something). I went up to her room, mainly to seek comfort from the woman I loved like just about any man does when he's sickly. She stayed with me for a better part of the evening before getting a text. Now, I really had thought nothing of it at the time, and she told me she was going down to the boys floor to watch a movie. I shrugged, and went back to sleep. I trusted her.

I woke up roughly around one in the morning in her room, to surprise ! An empty bed. She told me exactly where she was going to be, so I dragged my sick, nauseated ass out of bed, and headed down the stairwell to see if I could find her. The door to the dorm room she was supposed to be in was cracked, so I assumed it was safe (that and I could see the television flickering in the dark room). I pushed the door open, and let my eyes adjust for a moment. Floor? No Jane. Bean bag chairs? Wicker chair? Nope. Bed. Jane and some dude.

You never truly know what the "deer in the headlights" look is before you catch your girlfriend peeking out at you from the covers of some strange man's bed. Turning, I didn't wait for an explanation, and slammed the door behind me loud enough to echo down the hallway. Back up to her room I went, followed by bare footsteps following me as she came up behind me. At this point, I felt sick for an entirely different reason, and simply climbed back into her bed with the intent of dealing with it in the morning. She did her best to explain that nothing happened, and pointed out the fact that she was still fully clothed.

Like a dumbass, I bought it, but was still pretty pissed about her being in bed with some other dude, clothed or not. Stupid, blind Adonis. Several days passed before guilt ate away at her and she admitted to taking a ride. I was livid, but had become a doormat by this time, and forgave her. I do remember we actually discussed it on the way home to my parents (who now lived two hours away), and she actually tried describing/making fun of this other dude's dick. Like that's what I want to hear, right?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A year went by, and I was now twenty, working full time in nursing home administration, and making decent pay. I busted my ass to get that job without a degree, and Jane, myself, and one of her best friends all got a three bedroom apartment together with a lake view. The place was huge, new, and I even got a new kitten that I had adopted to give the place some life. I still have that cat to this day, and he's actually sitting on my lower back as I write this from bed. Good ol' Crooze.

In what I consider probably a last ditch effort to save her and I's relationship which had taken a downturn, I decided to propose to this girl. After all, we had endured four years together, and now lived together as well. Made sense. So I bought the ring (which she took when we split, annoyingly enough), took her out to a rather high end dinner theater, and proposed to her at the first break in the show. Yes, I'm a bit of a cornball, and talked to the manager before hand to spend a chunk of cash to let me use the set. We saw Romeo and Juliet that night, and I proposed to her from the balcony of one of the more famous scenes. Super cheesy, she burst into tears and said yes, and we went home to go at it like animals a good six or seven times.

Despite the momentary save, the relationship began to spiral once more, and I had eventually involved myself in online games. Now, if you play WoW, or anything like it, you know how absolutely addicting it can be. Though I don't play but maybe once a week or so now, if that, I was to the point then where I would come home from work at nine, and play until five in the morning until I passed out. This completely removed the romantic aspect of Jane and I's relationship, as she believed sex during the day was taboo and should never happen.

Eventually, she came to me in tears, and broke off the engagement. I was on the computer at the time, attentions 100% on what I was doing, and honestly didn't realize what had happened until about an hour later when I knocked the damn thing off the desk.

So, by this point, I was twenty, kicked out of school, and living on my computer. Jane on the other hand, had switched to nursing school, and was busting her ass with volunteer work to get in with the hospital. Honestly, I should have been proud of her. All I was concerned with though was when my next mini-pizza was going to be done in the oven, and if I had time to grab it before it burned.

After our split (we had juuust signed a new 1 year lease about two months prior with the engagement fresh in mind), I was shaken out of my fantasy world by my dad having a heart attack. Normally, heart attacks happen at the top of the heart, the symptoms are recognizable, and one can get to a hospital to at least attempt treatment. My father though, had something that the medical community calls "The Widowmaker" (or so the doc told us). The heart attack is based in the bottom chambers of the heart. There are no symptoms known, and eight out of ten times, the victim is dead before the realization of what's happening hits.

By some stroke of a miracle, he immediately recognized something wasn't right, and had an ambulance called. I will never, never forget the day that I got that call at work. I was sitting in my office in admissions, running over pre-screening for a new patient with MRSA, and checking insurance. My mom got on the phone, voice absolutely shaken in that tone that you never, ever want to hear from your parents, and told me what had happened. I was in shock for a few minutes there, and after I hung up the phone, simply collapsed. The business office manager across the hall came in half an hour later, and I told her what had happened. She offered to cover for me, and the HR manager told me to get lost and go see my father.

So, off I went, and spent nearly two weeks between the hospital and my parents home. An emergency triple heart bypass later, and Dad, though scarred and sporting a shiny new system of wires in his ribcage, is just fine.

More is forthcoming, of that I promise ! It's just a matter of sequencing everything chronologically (and correctly). Things should move a bit quicker as I get more recent, as the memories are definitely more fresh.

You know, I came here just browsing, and then..I couldn't stop reading. You have this way of making a story so relatable, despite the fact that of course everyone hasn't had the exact same experiences as you. Actually, it didn't even feel like I was reading a story, it felt like I was in it--fully engaged. I'm very intrigued to meet more characters, and see how it all connects. Thank you for sharing. =}